The Inner Rainbow: An illustrated history of human consciousness from Ancient India to the present day

presented by Henk van Oort, the Netherlands

Henk van Oort trained as a primary teacher before taking a Masters degree in English at the Amsterdam University. He has taught for 40 years in primary and secondary education, including class teaching in a Steiner school, teaching English, and running educational courses and seminars for teachers and parents. His interest in literature and poetry has led to his appearance at storytelling and poetry seminars, and his introductory courses to anthroposophy have proved to be highly successful. Based in Bergen N.H. in the Netherlands, Henk van Oort is married and the father of three grown-up children. He is the author ofAnthroposophy, A Concise Introduction. Other publication by Henk van Oort: ‘Challenging Children’, 100 activities for the English Lesson in Primary Education. E-mail: vanoort-breman@quicknet.nl

Featuring more than 50 colour images, The Inner Rainbow takes the reader on a journey through time, from Ancient India to the present day. This is the journey of human consciousness – the story of an eternal, metamorphic process. As the author suggests, consciousness is not a self-contained, unchangeable faculty. The way we perceive the surrounding world today – with the potential for sophisticated and exact observation of natural phenomena – has evolved over thousands of years. What was once a blurred and fragmentary perception in the time of Ancient India has evolved to a clear awareness of everyday reality.

Using pictures as his starting point, Henk van Oort outlines a remarkable narrative, beginning with the age-old myth of Noah’s Ark, in which a rainbow is presented to the survivors of the Biblical flood. This rainbow in nature, with its seven colours, is mirrored in the ancient teaching of the seven human chakras, also with seven colours. Through a gradual process of change over centuries, this outer rainbow has been internalised into an inner rainbow, shaping a bridge between body, soul and spirit.

With its ever-changing consciousness, this inner rainbow is a wonderful sense organ, in process of reaching a new peak of development. Understanding our past – the progressive stages we have passed through – is a prerequisite for optimal use of our consciousness now. Ultimately, then, this book can be seen as a guide for working with your own inner rainbow: to expand, deepen and enliven your picture of the world and your true self.

During my job as a teacher I have always been intrigued by the obvious correspondence between the developmental stages of a child on its way to adulthood and the general history of the human race on earth. The German philosopher Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) came up with his recapitulation theory telling us that every individual’s development parallels and summarizes its species’ evolutionary development. Much has been said about this theory, but to me the general content of this theory has been of some assistance to understand the process of growing up of a child into adulthood. With my teaching experience and this theory at the back of my mind I decided to browse the cultural history of the earth as far as I could get and look for examples that could confirm my observations and this theory. The result was quite overwhelming. I found many examples in the art of painting and in literature that exemplify the state of consciousness of a particular people at a particular period.

I’ll give some examples to further clarify what is meant. When in 386 AD Saint Augustine of Hippo (354-430) visited Ambrose (339-397), Bishop of Milan, he saw Ambrose bent over a book, apparently reading without moving his lips. Saint Augustine did not understand what was going on. He could not believe that Ambrose was reading without producing the sounds of the words. Saint Augustine tells about this in his Confessions. Apparently reading in silence, as we all do now, was a relatively new phenomenon in the fourth century. When teaching young children nowadays how to read we come across the same stage. Initially the whole class reads the text aloud, like a choral chant. Only gradually does the individual pupil develop the ability to read without sound. This also applies to teaching a foreign language.

Another example is the discovery of perspective in the early Renaissance in the fourteenth century. Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) must be mentioned. He constructed a device with which one could see the picture in perspective and afterwards draw the correct lines on a flat surface still creating a certain depth in the image. While teaching children of the age between ten and twelve I invariably got pupils at my desk asking for some assistance to create perspective in their drawings, whether these were landscapes with a road leading to the horizon or just their own bedroom. Pupils about ten, twelve years of age, discover the phenomenon of perspective just as humanity discovered these laws in the fourteenth century.

And so it can be said that knowledge of the development of human consciousness helps to understand the development of the child on its way to adulthood and vice versa. We better understand ancient cultures when we have closely studied the developmental stages of growing up.

The title of the book refers to the seven chakras having the same seven colours of the rainbow in the sky. In the course of the developmental process of human consciousness these chakras have been internalised and are now waiting to be developed as senses of the soul. Teachers can make use of these senses in themselves and of those in their students.

The Inner Rainbow is of interest for teachers because it offers some help in understanding both student and mankind in general.

Available from 4 April 2014.
Publisher: Temple Lodge, Forest Row, England.

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